Tue, Mar 11, 2008 page6

• Living conditions in Zimbabwe have deadly impact

  • The Guardian, HIGHFIELD, Zimbabwe
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  As Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe heads into an election, a mother's desperation sums up the reality of 100,000 percent inflation.

  The numbers ceased to mean much to Sarah Chekani about the time inflation in Zimbabwe surged past 50,000 percent late last year. It has doubled again since then, to the alarm of Mugabe heading into this month's presidential election. But that hardly matters to Chekani and others like her who survive in an orbit touched only fleetingly by cash or the spiraling exchange rate.

  Nor do the other numbers that the central bank governor has called "an economic HIV" -- half the population living on US$1 a day, 80 percent unemployment and 45 percent of Zimbabweans malnourished -- mean much when what you are worried about is your own young children.

  To Chekani, 31, the figures now only represent desperation and death; one death in particular, but also the fear that more might follow.

  "I try not to eat too much so there is enough food for my children, but even if I ate nothing there wouldn't be enough," she said.

  "I didn't think it was possible that people could starve in Zimbabwe or just die because the hospital has nothing. That's what we thought happened in Angola and Mozambique," she said.

  Chekani's home in Highfield, a crowded township on the edge of Harare, is bare. There are no chairs, only cloths on the floor. No bed, just a mattress for her and the two remaining children, boys of seven and eight.

  She has a gas hob but no oven, and the only decoration is a print of a Jesus Christ -- a white man with a golden halo.

  It wasn't always this way. Chekani and her husband were relatively poor, but his labors as a casual construction worker and her trading in secondhand clothes filled their three-roomed home with the things that marked rising living standards in Zimbabwe after independence: A radio and then a TV, a couch, armchairs, a bed.

  Then, five years ago, shortly after the birth of her only daughter, Chekani's husband died. She says she doesn't know why -- he just got sicker and nothing could save him.

  By then, his work had dried up as the economy crashed under Mugabe's maladministration and they were selling off their belongings to those who still had means. The TV fetched enough money to feed the family for a month. The bed went for almost nothing. Chekani even sold off most of her plates and cutlery, keeping only what the family needed for a meal.

  With the money, she did what large numbers of Zimbabweans are doing to survive: She bought up basic foods, keeping some for her family and making a small profit from the rest.

  There is almost nothing left in the house to sell, but Chekani gets by. Her latest acquisition is 2 liters of cooking oil, which she sells at a pavement stall, 5 tablespoons at a time, in return for a handful of near worthless notes. Other women are selling bars of soap by the slice and flour by the cup.

  But cash isn't something you keep for very long with 100,000 percent inflation and the Zimbabwean dollar diving from 7.5 million to the US dollar a month ago to about 25 million today as the government furiously prints money to fund pay rises for the army and civil servants ahead of the March 29 general election.

  Dealing with cash is like a torrid game of pass the parcel. Everyone wants it but then unloads it as quickly as possible in exchange for something worth having.

  Chekani gets rid of the money from selling her oil by buying two eggs. Sometimes the police and soldiers take the street hawkers' wares, claiming it is illegal to sell on the pavement. The women say it is another form of state looting.

  Chekani's trading kept her children alive until last November. Then her five-year-old daughter fell sick with diarrhea and fever.

  Chekani hesitated to take her to Highfield's government clinic because charges have risen several times over, but as the child's condition worsened she carried her there.

  The nurse said there was nothing she could do. There were no antibiotics to treat the child's condition. All she could offer was a spoonful of syrup to help bring her temperature down.

  "The nurse said she was sure she would be fine. She said lots of children were coming in with diarrhea because of the sewers," Chekani said.

  Chekani's child did not get better.
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